


Clean Dishes and White Linen

by ladyblack888 (888mph)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/888mph/pseuds/ladyblack888
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are what they are supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clean Dishes and White Linen

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on December, 2005.

Petunia is a good girl.

Petunia is a good daughter.  
She washes the dishes for mother, helps her with the laundry and keeps her company when father is aboard.  
And mother looks at one of Lily's photos and wipes a tear, because she misses her. And she also smiles, because Lily is so special and goes to that wonderful school and maybe, just maybe, someday she'll become someone very important.

Petunia loves to learn and has wonderful grades.  
During the summer father likes to talk with his daughters about what they learned during their school year.  
Petunia always looks forward for those starry summer nights, because father is so smart and he knows so much about Maths and Chemistry and Geometry and English.  
But he doesn't know a thing about Ancient Runes, Potions, Transfiguration or Charms, and soon enough he's transfixed by Lily's words.  
Then it's too late and young ladies must go to bed. Tomorrow we'll talk, Petunia.

When Lily turns seventeen toads start to appear inside Petunia's pockets and mother and father laugh, because that's all so funny and smart. But they don't see toads aren't meant to just appear inside people's pockets, that they're meant to be outside and Lord knows the diseases they may carry with them. What if she gets ill?

One day Petunia gets married.

Vernon is a simple man with simple tastes. His friends are simple and so is his job. What he asks is simple.  
He doesn't talk about things Petunia will never understand, no matter how smart she really is, nor does he like to fly with a broom. He doesn't have to care about misfit friends or to fight in a battle. He doesn't ask Petunia to stand by his side and fight along.

And maybe Petunia is just the other daughter; maybe she's just what they call a Muggle. But she won't be just a wife.  
Petunia is going to be the perfect wife.

Being a perfect wife means having supper ready ten minutes after Vernon arrives from work. To vacuum the entire house, which takes her four hours everyday, five minutes before leaving for the grocers, her back aching.  
But it doesn't matter if they envy Vernon and praise her, because the dishes are always clean and the linen white.

And then one winter day Petunia has just finished cleaning the drawing room and is about to move upstairs, when the flames in the fireplace turn green. But flames aren't supposed to be green. They are yellow, orange and red, sometimes blue. Flames can be green for just a couple of seconds if you're burning a magazine, but all of Petunia's Hellos are still on the coffee table, because she hasn't had the time to arrange this month's clippings of the American actress that became an European princess (and, really, that should be the only magic allowed in her world).

When Lily gets out of the fireplace, from where people should never get out, and she brings soot and grime and pain in her face.

'Petunia, there was a Death Eaters attack…'

Petunia had just finished cleaning the drawing room, but now she has to do it again. And that will take her another eighty minutes to do, which means dinner will be served ninety minutes after Vernon arrives, which will make him go to bed later. That's one hour and twenty minutes less for him to sleep.

'Mum and dad, they…'

And if Vernon sleeps one hour and twenty minutes less, he won't work well tomorrow and maybe his boss will be angry and will keep an eye on Vernon. And if something happens, the boss will remember that Vernon didn't work well that day and probably will get him fired.  
And if Vernon gets fired there will be no money to keep this house, and Petunia won't be the perfect housewife anymore, because there won't be any dishes to wash and linen to keep white.  
Because there are consequences. There are always consequences to everything one does in life. Like Lily going to that school…

'Sweetheart, are you listening to me?'

Shut up!

Shutupshutupshutup! Does Lily realise what she's saying? Doesn't she know that things are like they are supposed to be?  
That flames can't be green unless you've thrown a magazine inside, something Petunia would never do since the fumes can be toxic?  
That people can't step from inside a fireplace?  
Mother and father can' have been killed by people who eat death, because that's just not the way it goes. Death has no matter, so it can't have any proteins or vitamins. And if death has no proteins or vitamins and that's what they eat, then they must be weak, oh so weak. And if they are so weak they can't have killed mother and father.

The following week the fireplace is closed with bricks and cement and glue and wallpaper.

Everything will be all right now, and Petunia is again the perfect housewife.  
She's also a perfect mother, now, and will do anything to protect her son. The other boy, too, because she promised that mad old man (and he has Lily's eyes).  
And the best way to protect them is to keep things normal, to keep things simple, and maybe the boy won't be magical.  
And everything will be all right and normal, because if the dishes are clean and linen white, the following day Vernon will go to work and Petunia will vacuum the house for four hours until her back hurts.  
Which is good and it's what she wants, predictable, because it's the only way odd things that aren't supposed to happen won't happen.  
Like flames turning green and people stepping out of fireplaces and parents being killed before they have a chance to meet their grandchildren.

Because they never met Dudley.

Or Harry.

But they never saw Lily die.


End file.
